The fantastic skill system...

[Surly]

Okay, I'm fed up with this now. So I'm going to let my feelings be known. What is the deal with skills? So far, I have noticed that one of my characters has a skill; he's quite good at digging stone. All of my characters are now rubbish in combat, rubbish at hunting and there is no evident compensation for this.

In my opinion it is ridiculous that someone who has been a guard for 25 years suddenly hits at 26 percent (with no tiredness whatsoever) with a steel sabre. Now, skills are hidden. They are unexplained. And I'm sure I'm not alone in saying that they completely suck.

Now I'm sure that there must be some redeeming features to skills. They are just so well hidden I can't tell what they are. And with the huge cloak of secrecy that dictates that no Cantr player is allowed to know what's going on if he is not a member of the Programming department, I know that nobody is going to explain it to me. As far as I can see it is just another step on the road to making life so hard for players that they quit. I was so close the other day... and I've never thoguht like that before. For me the game is as much about roleplay as the games system, but this skills system does nothing but dictate to me what my characters are like. The characters I have who I perceived as hard men are not. Those that farmed alot seem to be good at stone mining. Some of my characters just seem to be rubbish at everything.

What gives? What is the system all about, and why is it such a big secret?

Rant temporarily on hold whilst I await responses.

[Solfius]

I believe the intital skills were randomised when they were implemented, now that does suck for existing characters, but it has to be implemented sometime, and when that is it can only be across the board and random.

As for more transparency with skills, I believe there is a discussion somewhere about adding descriptions for each action of how good you are at it, which I thought was a good compromise.

It keeps skills in the background enough to stop Cantr being turned into a hack'n'slash numbers RP game, but enough feedback for players to know what they do well or not.

With the major changes recently it's likely this idea was forgotten, and it may be worth bringing up repeatedly until implemented

[Revanael]

In my opinion it is ridiculous that someone who has been a guard for 25 years suddenly hits at 26 percent (with no tiredness whatsoever) with a steel sabre.

26?
What are you complaining about, again? I have a character who does less than half that with a sabre...

(EDITED by myself as I decided to remove the number.)

[Yo_Yo]

And I have one that does something like 8. No fun x.x

[Surly]

Just out of curiousity, does he have any kind of reputation with said sabre?

And I did mean to say claymore... *shakes his head* Got confused...

[Revanael]

He's a dedicated town guard, same as yours.

[Nixit]

I have one as well, who can only do 24% with a sabre, and he's been a guard all his life, but I don't mind much.

[T.L.H.E.]

I have some characters who are really laughable with any weapon... and they were all guard types before the skills. So, their personalities evolved and they changed careers to better suir their abilities. I also have some who're disturbingly good at fighting and hunting, and they're all peaceniks. They've changed a bit as well, but not to the point of a career change. Just need to learn to work with the skills.

[Black Canyon]

Believe it or not.... I actually have a guard who is lethal with a sabre.

[Lumin]

The only way I could see skills being good for roleplay or for the game in general is if they improved with practice. If that's not the case, then maybe they ought to be considered a failed experiment and scrapped altogether...

[Solfius]

The only way I could see skills being good for roleplay or for the game in general is if they improved with practice. If that's not the case, then maybe they ought to be considered a failed experiment and scrapped altogether...

I believe they do improve, but have no idea about how or how much

[Slowness_Incarnate]

It's silly, but I have a char who can do 35 % with a sabre, and she never used it before then. EVER. While the char who has used it LOTS, can only so about 13%

[creepyguyinblack]

They can be somewhat odd. I'd prefer it if they had alot less noticeable effect, eg: like a bad or low skill would would only lower your attack with a weapon by 25% tops off its original damage, and about the same possibility for the absolute best skill doing about 25% more damage. Those values are just off the top of my head, but I think a certain smaller range of variability is neccessary.

[DylPickle]

I heard something about the skills being randomized... Now I have no idea how this really works, but I'm just assuming that a number was randomly generated for each individual skill... I think the programers (if it's you guys that are incharge of this stuff) should look into making templates and then having the computer randomly generate a template for each newly created character. Then we could at least have some balances between strengths and weaknesses, rather than having those "bad spawns" that seem to be horrible at absolutly everything.

Hope that made the least bit of sense

[west]

...
Now I'm sure that there must be some redeeming features to skills. They are just so well hidden I can't tell what they are. And with the huge cloak of secrecy that dictates that no Cantr player is allowed to know what's going on if he is not a member of the Programming department, I know that nobody is going to explain it to me. As far as I can see it is just another step on the road to making life so hard for players that they quit.

...
What gives? What is the system all about, and why is it such a big secret?
...
Rant temporarily on hold whilst I await responses.

Knowledge base. Knowledge base. Knowledge base. As in, we need one.

About combat: It's almost laughable. As a rule, my warriors and guards and fierce people do far less than 20% damage with their crossbows or sabres, after 20+ years of using them to their normal everybody-effect.

I've ranted before about hiding skills (and basic game mechanics), saying it's not necessary. Cantr is a society simulator, not a game (like TORK, for example) where the purpose of the game is to figure out how to play the game.